Patricia G. Lange

Patricia G. Lange, Ph.D. is an anthropologist who focuses on technical identity negotiation and use of video to creatively express the self. Recognized as an expert on studies of mediated interaction and YouTube, her work has appeared in seminal collections such as The YouTube Reader and Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube, as well as numerous journals including: Visual Communication; Pragmatics; the Journal of Pragmatics; the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication; Enculturation; Games & Culture; and The Scholar and Feminist Online. Her book, Kids on YouTube: Technical Identities and Digital Literacies (Routledge, 2014), draws on a two-year, deeply engaged ethnographic project on YouTube and video bloggers to explore how video is used in informal learning environments. Currently, she is researching the genre of video rants and how they may be used to accomplish civic engagement.

Her ethnographic film Hey Watch This! Sharing the Self Through Media (2013) was screened in Paris at Ethnografilm (2014), an international film festival showcasing academic films that visually depict social worlds. Hey Watch This! is based on a multi-year project in which Lange recorded interviews and interactions at participant-run, YouTube gatherings across the United States. The film provides a unique diachronic study of the rise and fall of YouTube as a social media site, and offers a poignant look at how YouTubers envision their digital legacies. For additional information, or to view the trailer see: http://www.patriciaglange.org/page2/page2.html. To see the filmmaker’s statement at Ethnografilm, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdX064xY9Mo

She is also a co-author of two books: Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (The MIT Press, 2010), and Living and Learning with New Media: Findings from the Digital Youth Project (The MIT Press, 2009), which were based on a MacArthur-funded project on youth, digital environments, and informal learning. At CCA, she teaches courses on visual anthropology; digital cultures; anthropology of technology; new media and civic action; and ethnography for design. She has been an invited speaker at the San Francisco Art Institute, YouTube Headquarters, The Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the Transforming Audiences Conference.